Day 8: The Scooters of Oaxaca

A few days ago, I gave you a taste of the motor­cy­cle scene here in Oax­a­ca, at least those that are pressed into worka­day ser­vice. Today we look at scoot­ers here in Oax­a­ca, a species per­haps even more numer­ous than the work­ing motorcycle.

Frist off: in the above-men­tioned dri­v­el, I men­tioned that every man­u­fac­tur­er here in Mex­i­co has a copy, with greater or less­er fideli­ty, of the ubiq­ui­tous Hon­da CG-125 Car­go, and then failed to pro­vide a pic­ture of such. So here­with, over­sight reme­died, the Hon­da CG-125, in Domi­noes deliv­ery regalia:

Now with the scoot­ers. Actu­al­ly we’ll start with a sub-species of scoot­er, the step-through. The most com­mon type scene around Oax­a­ca is the Ita­li­ka, a par­tic­u­lar­ly rough exam­ple I found on Inde­pen­de­cia this morning:

There are, of course, the Hon­da 90 and 110cc units in abun­dance, here seen in per­son­al trans­port form:

and the local-made copies, ita­likas, i believe. We see them here again, press-ganged into ser­vice of the evil Dominoes:

and now for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, before we get to the con­ven­tion­al scoot­ers, is a WTF moment. I have no earth­ly idea what ser­vice this lit­tle beast­ie per­forms, but it’s here near the Zoco­lo every day, and it’s back tires are worn smooth, from on-road use, i presume:

A fair­ly large local user of scoot­ers as trans­port are the police. Here we see two of Oax­a­ca’s finest arriv­ing at the sta­tion aboard their fire-breath­ing Hon­da Elite 125:

Anoth­er pop­u­lar brand of local­ly-made scoot­er is the Ven­to, here seen trans­port­ing a local busi­ness­man on his dai­ly errands:

but some of the local folks have a more fine­ly honed sense of style and are will­ing to part with the seri­ous dough (by local stan­dards) to show it off. To wit, a clas­sic Vespa:

in con­trast to the clas­sic ves­pa above, here we see an old­er scoot­er, logos (and gloss) long since lost to the rav­ages of time and blaz­ing sun. I think this is an old­er Italika:

Speak­ing of fine­ly honed sense of style, this gent obvi­ous­ly has it goin’ on: newish ita­li­ka 150 scoot, board shorts, UNAM Pumas shirt, shades, beis­bol cap, and iPod:

Which brings us to a few scoots that are obvi­ous­ly objects of some enthu­si­as­tic focus of their own­ers. First we have the Rizla Gilera, com­plete with LeoVince pipe and RaceTech stickers:

And then a pair of mex­i­can car­bel­la Koncepts:

and in the “ideas above it’s sta­tion depart­ment”, the Ita­li­ka that wants to a Kawasa­ki when it grows up:

And to fin­ish off, it’s not a scoot­er, but it gives a great idea of the demands that these folks put on their trans­porta­tion on a reg­u­lar basis. Car? who needs a stinkin’ car?

well, that wraps it up for today. We’ll see what tomor­row brings. Keep the rub­ber side down and keep those feet up!
black­dog